Try telling a New Yorker burglary doesn't matter

The Lord Chief Justice has clarified his controversial guidelines on burglary sentencing. That's what it says here, anyway, in the official statement. What exactly does this clarification make clear?

Given the rumpus produced by his initial judgment - that first- or even second-time burglars should not be sent to prison - you might have expected Lord Woolf to be saying, "No, no - you got it all wrong. My remarks were misrepresented. I was quoted out of context." Some hokum or other that really meant, whoops, that was a gigantic mistake - I'll take it back now.

Some of you may even have believed, with infinite charity, that Lord Woolf could not possibly have meant what he was originally described as having said. Ah, you might have thought, here it comes: the corrective clarification. At last, we will hear what he actually intended when he seemed to be advising every delinquent in the country that a bit of amateur breaking and entering would be treated gently by the courts, and who cares what the victims think.

Well, try as I might, I cannot see what Lord Woolf has clarified. Except that he is utterly unrepentant. What he personally appears to be clear about - and which he intends to make clear (hence, the word "clarify") to anyone who has criticised him - is that his guidelines, which are precisely what they appeared to be at first glance, are not a "charter for burglars".

What is "inaccurate" about the treatment of his recommendations on sentencing is not the reporting of them, but the objections to them. People who argue, as the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Victims of Crime Trust do, that Lord Woolf's guidelines are a lurch toward leniency, are simply wrong. They will, he states flatly, act as a deterrent (a better one than prison, presumably), and help to protect the public. Is that clear enough?

Short of legislating the independence of the judiciary out the window (which David Blunkett seems to be considering), the Government can do nothing about Lord Woolf's view that the public is best protected by keeping criminals in its midst. But it will still carry the electoral can - as governments do - for the consequences of his sentencing policy.

Any possibility of escape from that responsibility was effectively demolished by the intervention of the Lord Chancellor, Derry Irvine, who, unlike Lord Woolf, is a government minister. Not only did he wholeheartedly endorse the Lord Chief Justice's guidelines but he blithely delivered himself of the opinion that "most people" were not disturbed at "first-time or even second-time burglars - where there are no aggravated elements in the burglary - not going to prison".

(So remember, the next time you are burgled, to dwell for a moment on whether the criminal who has ripped through your most personal belongings and made you feel unsafe in your own home was engaging in this activity for the first, or perhaps second, time. If so, please make an effort to feel less threatened and "disturbed" at the prospect of his continuing to dwell in your neighbourhood.)

The police complain about soft sentencing, but they are getting into the same spirit themselves. They have made it clear that domestic burglary has dropped right down their list of priorities. The Metropolitan Police have now said that they will largely ignore more than half of London burglaries and investigate only those where there is a strong likelihood of conviction.

This, they proclaim proudly, vastly improves their clear-up figures. The fewer cases they take on, the more impressive is the proportion that they solve. Here, clearly, is a solution to all of our public service problems: train companies should schedule only one train per day on each route, which they will guarantee to run on time, thereby achieving a 100 per cent punctuality record and an instant triumph for government target-setting.

There seems to me to be a common theme behind the Woolf-Irvine line on burglary sentences and the police's policy that this is now a crime that can often be ignored. Crimes against property are clearly being downgraded, as acts of violence against the person become more common in Britain.

What, after all, is the value of mere household chattels when life and limb are at stake on the streets? Given limited resources - whether it be police man hours or prison accommodation - we must concentrate on the biggest, nastiest crimes and let the little tiddlers go.

This argument is, on the basis of the hugely successful New York experience of reducing crime, totally wrong. At the risk of repeating what has been recited endlessly: New York discovered that, by rigorously pursuing the smaller offences (such as jumping over subway turnstiles without paying), anti-social hooliganism and the vandalism of property, they were able to create an atmosphere of public decency and order which made the detection and prosecution of major crime tractable.

The reason that a potentially chaotic, multicultural city such as New York was able to get a grip on crime was connected to the profound belief in American political culture that the opinions and concerns of ordinary people matter.

I cannot imagine any American political figure making the arrogant, patronising remarks that Lord Irvine made - implying that it was really rather plebeian to be vengeful about amateur house-breakers. Everybody started poor in America (at least a generation or so back): the idea that the property you have struggled to acquire should be treated with airy aristocratic disdain would not go down well. (Nor would the argument that poverty is a lifelong excuse for behaving badly.)

What we urgently need to have clarified is the purpose of the criminal justice system that exists to protect the law-abiding. That is what it is for. If it also succeeds in reform or rehabilitation that is fine, but that is not its primary function. Without that clear understanding, we are lost.